Pit Stop: Nordheim inherits the waste, and few of the profits, from the South Texas oil boom
If you’re in Nordheim on a Thursday morning, chances are you’re heading to Elo Pfeifer’s place on Broadway. That’s the day Pfeifer smokes the sausages that some say are the best for miles around. They sell out fast. Unless you’ve ordered them beforehand, you’re probably out of luck.
Pfeifer has been cooking barbecue and selling goods from his non-air-conditioned general store since he sold the bar across the road in the early 1970s. Broadway Grocery has now become something of an institution in this tiny South Texas outpost of about 300 residents, an hour southeast of San Antonio.
Aside from Pfeifer’s store, and the bar that has stood on the corner of Broadway and First Avenue since 1933 and a school that teaches through 12th grade, there isn’t much to Nordheim except for shuttered-up storefronts and a population in decline.
But it shouldn’t be this way—and perhaps won’t be this way for much longer. Nordheim is surrounded by oil. A few years ago, DeWitt County, situated over the Eagle Ford Shale, exploded with one of the biggest oil booms in the country. As the Observer noted in 2011, nearby Cuero went from quiet ranching town to oil boomtown in just a few years. Cuero attracts about $250,000 a year in sales taxes from local businesses and makes $30,000 a month selling its water to oil companies for use in the fracking extraction process.
Read more: http://www.texasobserver.org/nordheim-fracking-waste-pits/
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